Space Flight
by Goblin Cat KC
Summary: Vegeta longs to escape the earth...
1. Space Flight

Space Flight   
by KC 

Disclaimer: DBZ belongs to other people, not me. Not one peso is made on this story, although the reviews are worth more than gold.   
Vegeta POV, no pairings   
Warning: unresolved character angst. PG for drinking, swearing. 

*

Arms crossed, eyes closed, Vegeta leaned against the wall and ignored the fighters as they sat at the long garden tables. The gravity room was still broken, the kitchen had been emptied for the company picnic, and with so many people going in and out of the house, there wasn't an empty room to be found.

Something struck his boot and he looked down. An empty beer bottle had apparently rolled along the grass and come to a stop at his heel. He glanced at the main table. Although the event was a public gathering celebrating some Capsule Corps innovation, the small group of fighters was treating it like an excuse to get drunk. Several emptied bottles lay under their table with more tumbling after. 

Goku noticed his glare and grinned. "Sorry 'bout that," he called, finishing off another bottle. Between him and his sons, a sizable pile was growing under their chairs.

"Three!" Trunks said, slamming his emptied bottle on the table before tossing it into the air. Trunks blasted it, then grabbed a bottle and bolted it down as fast as he could while Goten counted. So far they were up to ten blasted each.

Summer, day in, day out. Vegeta kicked the bottle away to shatter against the wall. Could something please descend from the sky and start killing people, just to break the routine? He sighed and looked up at the sky. Not a single cloud, just an infinite field of blue, a perfect summer day.

He glared at them all again. Just sitting around living their lives, a little training here and there, school, married life...day in, day out. Sickening. He'd done that on Frieza's ship and knew how much it sucked out of you without you knowing. He closed his eyes and remembered. Of course it had been different then. The routine involved being beaten, slaughtering whole planets, but still it was a routine. Frieza's ship, helpless planet, Frieza's ship, helpless planet, and maybe a little training here and there, a soldier's life, day in, day out. A waste.

Gravity wore heavy on him, even when it was as light as the earth's. A planet was no place to live, not for him. He'd tallied it all up once, out of curiosity, and figured he'd spent most of his life in deep space capsules. He exhaled. Deep space, black with a few bright stars in the distance, and only the dim controls of his capsule for light. Once in awhile he'd wake up, stare out of the porthole for awhile, watching the stars drift by before he fell asleep again. Those were the only times he slept without nightmares, without feeling confined. Even in those tight pods, how could he feel confined with space expanding all around him?

Their loud laughter interrupted his thoughts. Eighteen had let Krillen fall off his chair and Roshi had laughed until he'd fallen, and when you're drunk that's the funniest thing in the world. Vegeta snarled and flew into the air, escaping into the sky.

The brief spike of ki caught the fighters' attention, and Gohan glanced at the spot where the prince had been standing. "Where'd Vegeta go?" 

"Who cares?" Krillin said, climbing back onto his seat and reaching for another drink. "He wouldn't know a good time if it bit him in the ass."

Capsule Corps shrunk as Vegeta flew higher and higher. The laughter and clinking bottles faded into silence and he floated for a few minutes, relieved to be alone. He looked around. The city lay spread out beneath him, a noisy gray blur of humans and cars. Even high up he could hear it. He knew that the city ended several miles west and headed that way at top speed.

It didn't take long. After a few minutes, the streets gave way to green fields rippling like water. Deer leaped through the tall grass like dolphins, swallowed up in the waves before leaping up again, heading to some unknown grazing spot. He descended until he skimmed just above the grass, letting his hand trail as if it were water. 

His mind wandered back in time, before earth and before Frieza, even before his father, to a handful of days on Vegetasei, then simply a red planet full of chasms and canyons to fly through, a sky a dozen shades of scarlet, and warm winds that cradled him as he trailed red dust in his wake. In those days, flight was a gift, a freedom to explore any place he wished, test his skill against the jagged cliffs and rise into the sky as high as he dared.

And then came Freiza, and with him flight became nothing but the shortest distance between his capsule and death.

Bad memories. He shook his head and flew a little higher than the trees that went by as if they were the ones moving and he was standing still. Earth grated on his nerves, no matter how much nicer it was than most planets. He'd never seen a blue sky before coming here. Other planets were orange or red, sometimes yellow, swirling with noxious gases that burned his lungs. But earth...this planet was different. Unnatural. Sweet air, even in the cities where the humans complained of pollution. He shook his head as he flew. Fools, all of them. They'd never had to struggle through methane clouds, live on atmospheres heavy with ammonia, fight in hurricane gales a thousand miles deep. The trace amounts of carbon and radiation only made the planet real so he wouldn't confuse it with a dream. So much blue seemed unreal. It made him feel detached from everything. The only way he knew it was real was the way its gravity dragged on him, no matter how lightly.

The grasslands turned into rocky shores and then ocean. How long had he been flying? He didn't stop. The ocean sparkled in the noon sun, and dark shapes swam beneath the surface before diving down into deeper waters. On the horizon, the sky and ocean blended together until they were indistinct, nothing but that unnatural shade of blue surrounding him, crushing him until he thought he would collapse on himself.

Without a second thought he stopped flying forward and starting flying up. He had the sudden need to reassure himself that black space and all the stars were still there somewhere behind all that blue. The air turned cold, then freezing. He took a deep breath before it could freeze in his lungs and ascended to the first super level. The sky began to turn hazy as he moved between atmospheres, slipping from light blue to gray, and then to black, the same comforting black he saw the few times he'd woken up in a deep space capsule. The air stopped being frozen and simply stopped being, and he could no longer breathe. After a few seconds, the back of his head started to tingle.

It wasn't close enough. Without a backward glance he ascended to the second level, pushing all of his strength to take him higher, one more mile, one more foot, one more inch. Stars filled the range of his sight, and he stretched out his hand to the brightest. He knew they were lightyears away, but moving like this, he was sure that if he could only push himself a little harder, he could touch one. They seemed so close it hurt to look at them. His eyes began to freeze.

The tingle turned into a hum as his body demanded oxygen. The stars blurred, turning from diamonds to an indeterminate field of light. He curled his fingers and the star slipped out of his reach, fading into the rest, and with groan he fell out of the super state. His hair turned dark again. For a second he stopped moving, then slipped back to earth.

Although he could breathe again, he did nothing to stop his freefall, helpless as the planet drew him down. Space turned into sky again. The whole sky was one shade of blue, like a painted wall. Everything was blue, the sky, the ocean, the entire planet. No trace of cold, comforting space. Just blue.

The ocean turned the sky into stained glass before he realized he'd hit the water. He held still, sinking fast until the sun disappeared. The deepest waters were black with luminescent small fish, but it wasn't the same. Even though he couldn't breathe and the water was cold, it was no substitute for the stars. Arms outstretched, he forced himself to rise slowly, breaking the surface and floating a few inches above the water so that the waves brushed his boots. He stood like that for several minutes, cold and breathing hard and disoriented.

Everything was blue, the sky, the ocean. The entire damn planet was blue, and he resigned himself once again to living with only an occasional glimpse of black. He shrugged once. What did it matter? There was nothing out there for him, just empty space and stars.

The only place he'd ever slept without nightmares or memories, always heading towards one star or another.

In the uniform blue planet, he finally reoriented himeslf and turned back towards Capsule Corps, slowly trailing his boots in the water. It would be another beautiful, cloudless day.

End


	2. Snow Fall

****

Snow Fall  
Sequel to Space Flight

by KC

Disclaimer: DBZ belongs to other people, not me. Not one peso is made on this story, although the reviews are worth more than gold.   
Warning: angst

From his position on his back, the snow looked like stars. The full moon glowed behind the clouds and lit every flake as they fell, one by one, by the thousands, filling the empty field he lay in. Years ago in his deep space capsules, he could watch the stars drift by, accompanied by asteroids trailing ice or gas giants that raged with storms and hurricanes hundreds of miles wide, all framed by the capsule's porthole. Protected from the void by that thin sheet of reinforced glass, he watched the universe go by.

A nice change to imagine it coming towards him. They landed on his skin, touched his eyelashes, covered him in reassuring cold. Here there were no feelings, no emotions, just cold and darkness and one or two good memories. So many years and so few memories made. Death and slaughter could be repressed, and the good memories of drifting endlessly blurred after awhile, leaving him only with the worst days on Frieza's ship, the most vivid memories that he didn't want to remember but refused to fade.

Using his left arm for a pillow, Vegeta raised his right hand to the sky as if to catch a star. One of them landed in his palm, a tiny bit of cold before it melted. Another landed on the tip of his finger and he brought it up close to his eyes, studying the crystal patterns for the brief second before it turned to water and vanished, an ice comet traveling too close to a sun.

The wind changed, the snow blew sideways. He smiled; it was as if his ship had changed course. A moment later the wind died down again and he was traveling through the stars once more. Stars passed by endless as he flew in silent darkness, never to reach his destination. If he wanted, he could close his eyes and sleep for a few hours, and wake up to the light of a thousand year old supernova as he passed.

"Vegeta?"

He jerked his head towards the sound. Hoping it was only his imagination, he sighed when he saw Goku standing a few feet away, arms around himself as he shivered. Without a sound, Vegeta looked back at the snow. Was too much to hope for that the other Saiyan would leave? He repressed a grumble as Goku stepped closer.

"Aren't you cold?" Goku asked, looking him over. The prince wore only a sleeveless training outfit and boots, not even gloves. A thin layer of snow covered his body, and his outstretched hand was blue at the edges.

Vegeta noticed his look and followed it to his hand. "Figures," he said, "I've been on this planet so long I'm fading into it."

"Huh?"

For a few seconds Vegeta considered insulting Goku, but he let it go. He could hardly blame the idiot for not reading his mind. He closed his eyes and let the snow begin to gather on his face. "This whole damn planet's blue. The oceans, the sky, the mountains, everything."

"But it's not blue now," Goku said, even though he wondered why the color mattered at all. "The sky's black."

"Why do you think I'm out here?" Vegeta snapped.

"I dunno," Goku said. "I thought you might be trying to freeze to death."

No answer. Vegeta opened his eyes again, looking back at the sky through a couple of snowflakes that had landed on his eyelashes. Maybe the idiot was right. He couldn't feel his hands anymore. Or his legs, now that he thought about it. All the feeling was leaving his body.

"Won't you come home?"

Would he never leave? Vegeta glanced sideways at him. Goku's face, so often twisted in that grotesque grin, was serious, eyes wide open, mouth slightly parted in confusion. At least he hadn't powered up and burned the falling snow away.

"It'll take more than a few snowflakes to kill me."

"There's more than a few--" Goku started, then broke off. Vegeta wasn't listening. He considered transmitting him out of the snow back to Capsule Corp, but he didn't think Vegeta would like that. And it wouldn't stop him from coming out here again. With a sigh, he flopped backwards in the snow beside him, sinking a few inches until his back touched the earth.

Vegeta glanced at him without moving. "What are you doing?"

"Just laying down," Goku said. He stared at the sky, the grey outlines of black clouds, moonlight diffused to a pale glow, and snowflakes pouring out of a hole torn in the sky. "Pretty." No reply, but he hadn't expected one. "It's kinda like milk spilling. Like the Milky Way broke open."

"Milk what?"

"Milky Way." Goku glanced over at him. "That's the galaxy's name."

"Mm." Vegeta lowered his hand into the snow. Instead of stinging ice, it felt like cushioning air. The falling snow looked nothing like milk to him. "Ka'ul."

"Huh?"

"The galaxy is called Ka'ul, the great serpent," he said, sounding like he was repeating something he'd been told several times. "The stretch of stars you see every night is his first breath, frozen to us."

"Oh. Is that what all Saiyans believed?"

A half-shrug, meaning Vegeta wasn't going to talk about it anymore. He was lucky to get even that bit of information; Vegeta so rarely spoke of his past. Instead of laying back down, Goku watched the snowflakes settle on his companion's face, lining his eyelashes like diamonds. He wondered how the prince could lay so still when he was shivering and wanted to go home to a big blanket and hot chocolate.

"Aren't you cold?" he repeated.

Vegeta considered. "Not anymore." He saw Goku's startled face and laughed. "You think I want to freeze to death, don't you?"

"Well..."

"Kakarrot, you've been in space. Didn't you ever look out the portholes?"

"Huh?" Now there was a subject shift, what did space have to do with snow? "Not really. I was busy training. And besides, there wasn't much to look at."

The prince turned to face him. "You never watched comets strike a planet? Or watched a nebula warp as you went through?"

There was such a longing in Vegeta's eyes that Goku wanted to say that of course he'd watched the galaxy, that he'd looked out of the portholes for hours at a time. That he hadn't thought the unchanging space dotted with identical stars was boring. That nebulas hadn't been more than dust clouds. He lowered his head. "I never saw anything like that."

Vegeta looked away again, staring intently at the snowfall. Most of his body was now layered in white ice, burying him in substitute falling stars. "Maybe it's different in deep space," he said, in a low, flat voice. "This is the longest I've ever been on a planet."

He sounded so lifeless that Goku winced. "Do you hate it here?"

Above them, the clouds parted slightly, allowing moonlight and real stars to shine. The blizzard was beginning to break up, turning into a storm more of slush than snow. Lightning flashed across the sky, and the illusion finally broke as endless space turned into grey clouds, falling stars turned into rain.

"There's nothing to hate," Vegeta whispered. "The planet never changes. It's blue and static. At least in space I could see stars born, or planets die. I watched stars explode and trickle into black holes." He put his hand back up towards the sky, and cold water slipped through his fingers like cold rivers. "And now I only see them at night."

Goku almost asked if he wanted to go back, but he knew the answer. There was nothing for him to go back to. If he could have given Vegeta what he wanted...but it was impossible to give him a past even the prince hardly knew. Vegetasei was gone. Space was useless. The world was one crushing shade of blue. He couldn't hope to change that even with a dragon's wish.

He grasped Vegeta's hand, warming the cold skin. There was no resistance. "Please," he said, "it's freezing. Let's go home."

Unconsciously Vegeta tightened his fingers. Falling snow was as close as he would ever get to cold space. Kakarrot was as close as he would ever get to home. Vegeta shrugged and closed his eyes. It no longer mattered. The snow was gone anyway.

A second later they disappeared as Goku teleported them away, leaving behind the ice and wind and their vague outlines in the snow. The blizzard turned completely to rain and melted the fallen snow until their shapes vanished into the grass. As the clouds rained themselves out, the stars expanded to fill the sky, a field of glittering ice millions of miles away.

End


End file.
